We think that we are bad people for ever experiencing a feeling that inconveniences others, and we don’t even believe ourselves to be genuine when we’re stuck and need help.

The problem with silence is that it can’t speak up and say why it’s silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplified, takes on a life outside our intentions, in that silence can get misread as indifference, or avoidance, or even shame, and eventually this silence passes over into forgetting.